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I'm goin to the redwoods next week so in preparation I changed my oil and did a coolant flush.. my car was making a boiling sound the other day in 90 degree weather and I was thinking the cooling system might be clogged. it was..while I was draining the lower rad hose, I noticed it was kinda dirty.. took it off and it was realllllllly dirty. cleaned her up and topped her off. its all jesus now.

I'm super jealous of all the people at WCSS right now. I was on my way home from work in port townsend when I saw a large herd of subies rumbling by to go camp for the weekend. I'll be at the next one for sure.

yeah haha never thought to clean it before. my car has been running hot though and smelling like hot dirt... if you know what i'm talking about. its an odd smell. anyways its gone. just gonna change the brakes and itll be ready for fridays drive down the coast

I did not end up taking the sube on my road trip. last wednesday was my birthday and to my surprise, when I opened the garage after work I saw my family video taping my reaction to the new 2012 mazda 3 staring at me. it had 60 miles on it. what a gift. anyways, since the imp was kinda acting up I decided to take the mazda and what a difference! even when the sube was stock height on sti struts and other suspension goodies it didn't handle like the mazda. I'm glad it handles alright because the deal is I can't mod it at all. DD only. that just means I can throw money at the subie and not have to worry about fixing it in time for work lol

The trip was awesome. A group of 20 or so of us departed friday morning on a memorial cruise for our buddy that passed last year. We went to the Redwoods to camp for a few days and searched for the Grove of Titans (to no avail),, we encountered what we assumed were locals that didn't want a group of our size stomping through the grove, and concluded that they sent us on a wild goose chase until we finally gave up our search. I will find it some day! then we made our way back north and hit Crater Lake yesterday. slept in Eugene, then hit up the mall in Portland and finally made it back home a few hours ago.

I'm gonna call some exhaust shops and set up an appointment to get it done either tomorrow or wednesday. I'm gonna have them remove the second cat and have them put a straight pipe all the way back to a glasspack and tuck it up as high as they can. Since I don't have to daily the subie anymore I might as well make it sound like a moving earthquake haha
gonna snorkel it tomorrow
I'm also gonna buy some 1" wheel spacers and replace the front axles soon.

i'll get some pics of it up pretty soon. not much change in the way of looks

wooooow, so just for fun i wanted to see what it would sound like if I hacked off the muffler. it sounds soooo beefy and badass. I'm gonna save myself a few hundred bucks and leave it like it is. its quiet enough that I won't get pulled over when I'm cruising, but it gets pretty intense when I mash on it. it sounds really close to my buddies modded wrx haha. now off to the store to buy some pvc piping and a drill bit and build a snorkel =]

I mocked up a snorkel with some gutter water drainage pipe with all the ruffles and what not to see how that would do because it was 5 bucks and it was a single piece construction. my guess is it would work if I found a proper grommet to attach it to the intake, but with the input of another snorkeler (keaton) I decided I'm gonna go pvc as it would provide better flow.

I bought some duplicolor truck bedliner yesterday to paint the two-tone. i wanted to get herculiner, but it was thirty dollars more expensive because it came with as a kit with paint rollers and stuff which I already have. I'll get some pics when its all done. I should be able to have it done by the end of the week, time permitting. I got the front bumper all sanded down last night but ran out of light.

I've also been doing research on the D/R swap. I WANT it badly. the stock trans just doesn't cut it. I've also been reading up about welded rear diffs. the overall consensus is that it transforms your grocery getter into a offroad monster. downsides being tire chirping and axle binding. meh. its a play car now so if I break stuff, i'll fix it NBD. The D/R swap is the big thing though. I need to start collecting parts so I can get that going and test it to see if I REALLY need a welded diff for where I will take it. I want to get into hardcore stuff so I can hang with my jeep buddies and drop some yota bros jaws. so it will probably happen haha

Hmmm maybe ill lsd for the rear instead cause I drive it on the road a lot. If the chirping was the only negative effect id be all over it,but I don't wanna blow up the diff if I can avoid it. And its gonna be my winter/mountains/snow car and I've read welded is unpredictible in the snow

The LSDs (Clutch or Viscous) aren't really the best for off-road from what I've read by others, it may help a little. What would be tits would be an E-locker or an Air locker setup, so you can lock and unlock as needed like a true 4x4.

That would be sweet but $$$ I'm on a college kid budget so I might just have to leave the diff open for now if there isn't a reaonable solution. What do most of the gl guys do? Welded? Id like to get out on the trails with the nw offroad crowd but don't wanna slow em down you know

It works pretty damn well,, not completely air tight yet, but close. car almost stalls when I put my hand over it.

I got my package from Scott! sad that it's going to be sitting for a while as I slowly gather parts. I'm not in a rush as the current tranny is solid, super low mileage and I can get around alright in most of the conditions I drive in haha.

in the meantime, Im buying a whitewater kayak and gonna run some rivers! and then maybe some small subie stuffs

went shooting the other day. did a little bit of hooning as well. did a sweet hill climb and tested the snorkel. the snorkel worked great, the hill climb (while I still did it took a few tries) BARELY had enough balls to limp to the top but didn't stall

I let my buddy drive my car, which probably wasn't a good idea. he thought he was ken block and ended up hitting a giant pot hole going 40+. after that we felt the car steering itself during acceleration and got out to find that the passenger side bracket holding the steering rack on was busted off. my alignment is probably messed up too. junk yard was closed today so i'll get to it later this week. he took a few vids of me doing the hill climb so i'll post those up later. for now you will have to make due with a cell phone pic

Hey it's been a while. Since my last post, I've really beat on the car and broke a few things.

I'm in the process of replacing both front axles with GD sedan axles for their extra .5" in length. While I was taking everything apart I found that the Pass side wheel bearing is toasted and I'm waiting on funds to proceed.

I'm debating whether to get WRX brakes and hubs because i've heard that my car uses an internal abs tone ring and the GD axles have one on the actual axle.

is it possible to take the tone rings out of my current hubs, or can I take them off the GD axle? Would it be okay to have WRX brakes up front and drums in the back? I'm confused about a few things at the moment.
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So option #1 is to get new hubs, hub bearing kits, rotors and pads and rebuild my brakes and some how take the ABS tone rings off the new axles or get them out of my hubs.

Option #2 is to get WRX hubs and brakes and not have to do any modifying of the ABS tone rings. But will I run into a brake bias issue having drums in the back?

-fix the condensation problem in my car. its ridiculous. I just found mold growing on my seats; last winter condensation would get on all the windows and freeze on THE INSIDE. Bad heater core? is water getting in somewhere?

Welp I learned that 2000+ imprezas use the same ABS tone rings as GD so the axles are a direct swap. good news.

in the process of removing my hubs to get new bearings put in I ended up tearing the boots on both ball joints. I don't care what anyone says, the picklefork tool is stupid. It woulda been fine if the ball joints were bad and I was just removing them but ************, they were fine before I touched em. Oh well live and learn. picked up some new ones.

I also picked up some new rotors, the other ones were rotting away

Should get her all put back together this weekend if I don't hit anymore snags.

If I'm real lucky and finish on saturday I'll mob up to the mountains across the hood canal and see if I can't get stuck in some SNOWWW.

For future reference, a better way to remove the lower ball joint without the pickle fork is to use a hammer and hit the edges of the lca after you take the joint nut off. Been doing this for a while and though they can be stubborn and require some pounding at times you'll save your ball joints from damage. And if you're worried about damaging the lca, use a brass hammer.

so everything got put back together and the car is driveable. I haven't been driving it because I still want to get the rear wheel bearings done and bleed the brakes. Also because i traded in my mazda for a new forester 2.5X and have been working 7 days a week.

Things to take from rebuilding the front end. GD sedan axles are longer than GC axles. GD axles are a direct swap into '00-'01 gc because the tone rings are identical. I cranked the wheel to full lock and started creeping.. no more clicking or anything. I hope they hold up alright.

I decided this is just gonna be my adventure car, not hardcore wheeler. I'll still take it on some easier trails, but I'm just done replacing ************ for a while lol. I'm trying to move out and its pretty hard when I spend all my money on this car.

Its been a little bit without an update, so here's a pretty damn cool one.

Ive saved up some money this winter and am making some big changes to my wagon.

Got this used from Scott for a steal. 6" SJR kit. Thanks again!

and I want to put 29" dynapro mt's on the car so I bought some of these - and of course some 5x4.5 hub adapters.

I'm going to start the lift early next week. If any of you have any info or tips on how to make the shift linkage work that would be a great help. Ive heard thats a bear. I'll also be buying the tires after I get my tax return.

I hope to get a job with the National Park Service or similar this summer, so after summer I'll be working toward a 2.2/2.5 frankenmotor build and aussie 4.11 5mt awd dual range tranny.

I got it out of the garage today! Took Northcoast's advice and cut some of the metal off the back side of the tranny tunnel and it shifts now. I tried taking it around the neighborhood and noticed the clutch slipping really bad. it was so bad that when I tried driving up a small hill it just quit, and a guy was nice enough to tow me back to my house. It was fine when i pulled it into the garage a month ago.. I'll probably just hold off on the clutch till I do the dual range swap. My question, will I be burning up clutches on the regular with this thing now?! I know the tires are big and all but it doesn't even want to try to move.

Is there a way to swap 4.11 gears into a GL d/r and match with a 4.11 rear diff?

anyways, here are some pics

Im replacing a broken rear axle today and might break out the BFH to do a little tire clearancing.

my goal to drive it today was accomplished lol its so weird having to step up into a car. awesome.